


Castles of Ash

by mortalitasi



Category: Hordes of the Underdark, Neverwinter Nights
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1564553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd promised herself that after Undrentide, life would be wonderfully uneventful. Then again, she'd also promised Deekin to stay awake for longer than fifteen minutes after hearing the words "super grand re-re-retelling," but that never happened either. She supposes she'll find time to be hung up about it - after she's done saving the world. </p><p>Again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Darkest Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there. Neverwinter Nights has been a personal obsession since about forever, and I finally got the courage up to properly write up a character profile for my girl and set her in action. This is going to be a series of oneshots detailing her time in the Underdark, the miscellaneous conversations in between important quests, said quests, lots of blood and gore, and then further into Cania, and, hopefully, to her own more or less happy ending. 
> 
> I've read through this 394850398 times so I am really just done proofreading, so I hope you'll forgive me for any stupid blunders or repetitive words. Things start blurring together after you hit double digits.
> 
> That said, I'm really excited to be properly publishing shit again, so. Here goes! Hope you enjoy the first, gigantic, very rewritten and different sudden introduction to the Underdark. Because all fun things begin with a bang! ...Or a coercive, gradually debilitating curse.

The world has dulled to a distant roar.

Halaster's voice is still ringing in her ears, an unpleasant echo heavy with magic-- and the weight in her chest, like her heart has become leaden and hot and is sitting uncomfortably between her lungs, acutely felt each time she draws breath, its burden shifting with her. It is the enchantment. The geas. The binding spell. Curse him, the mad wizard. Curse this place. Curse them all! She can't breathe. She'd be weeping if it were not for the crushing panic.  
   
 _Let her live and down you'll go-- to take your rest with those below._  
  
Her mouth tastes of purple dirt and dry rock. There is an ache building at the back of her head where she slammed her skull into the floor with her rough landing.  
   
She had been falling through darkness and space for moments that seemed too long to count before it had stopped, abruptly, and everything below her neck had erupted in a fiery flash of pain as she hit the ground. She’d heard a distant crack of something moving out of its assigned place, but the oppressive clench of the geas around her heart is the only thing worthy of occupying her attention. She’s lived her entire life with her will as the only boundary. To feel the limits of the enchantment closing around her mind is, she’s sure, the closest she will ever come to dying without being killed.  
   
Palieth lies there for a while, staring up at the gloomy ceiling with unseeing eyes. The chamber she is in is large, she’d seen that much on her way down, and dark. The lightless braziers had rattled with the force of her touchdown. Some have even fallen, but she can’t bring herself to care very much. All that exists is the cage in her mind and the agony in her back. If she’s broken something that will take months to heal, she will hunt Halaster down, master wizard or not, and feed him his every last one of his crooked, browning teeth. Halaster has a face like a maze, alive with wrinkles and the evidence of age, tiny ice blue eyes bulging with frenzied knowledge. She would recognize him anywhere.  
   
Around her the room remains dim, and she thanks the gods for elven eyesight as she forces herself upright. She hisses in discomfort as the bad feeling in her shoulder sharpens into a hot point of agony, but forces herself to move it experimentally. Her arm responds comfortingly quickly.  
   
It hurts, yes—but does not seem to be broken or too out of shape except for an exceptional bruising. She supposes she should consider herself lucky. The positive thought isn’t easy to hold onto as she bends a knee and reaches out a hand to steady herself on what seems to be an altar. Looking at the spot where she fell, she thanks the good fortune that guided her to narrowly miss the set of stairs leading up to altar. Now that she’s standing, she can see that she landed squarely in the space between the three stairs and the small, empty plateau before the curve of the decorated site of worship that’s been carved out of the stone.  
   
One battered hand runs itself over the crescent shape of the altar, appraising it with quiet contemplation. This doesn’t look like anything dedicated to Lolth. Lolth’s idols and altars are twisted things that emanate misery like beacons. She’s only ever encountered them in pockets of cultists that live in the dark, deep places of the world, and the depraved practices the more… adventurous of religions require from their followers has never ceased surprising her. One would think that after a few centuries of cognizance, there would be a maximum number of creative ways which you could come up with to sacrifice someone.  
   
Drow sects have taught her otherwise.  
   
But the thing under her hand is different. The energy surrounding it is cool, and peaceful, and collected. It feels almost familiar. Her fingers are running along the carefully-chiseled arc of a half-moon when she hears it.  
   
Footsteps.  
   
She’s barely managed to stagger to her feet when a door at the far end of the chamber flies open. The light that streams from the hallway beyond almost blinds her, but she lifts an arm to block it while the other reaches for one of the daggers at her hip. She’s still in shadow – she has time to hide, but she must act quickly. Now a voice. Female.  
   
“Valen, wait.”  
   
Voice number two. Male. “I heard something.”  
   
“I did, too, but— _Valen!_ ”  
   
The light is blocked by someone tall stepping into the doorway. She darts behind one of the columns by the altar, silent as death, and listens as the person approaches. Even stride, but heavy. He’s wearing armor. Big armor, from the sound of it. There’s something else, too. A clink of chain. A mace? No. A flail. She chances a small peek around the circumference of the column, and sees immediately that she was right. She almost lets out a sound of dismayed surprise when she realizes just how _large_ the flail in question is. That thing could crush her skull like an overripe melon. Gods. Where is she? Where did that mad wizard send her?  
   
The other set of footsteps is considerably lighter. A rogue? Drow. Definitely drow, nimble, with a measured, elegant gait. This must be the woman, the one from before, who followed her through the Underdark and gave her advice. Palieth remembers her well. She moves like an assassin.  
   
“Valen,” she hisses for the third time in a space of as many minutes. That’s the man’s name, if Palieth is right. “You know the policy.”  
   
“We have no time to wait,” the man says. Palieth can hear the flail swaying as he turns, side to side, surveying the room. She’s standing so still she can feel every muscle in her legs. “Someone is here with us. Show yourself, if you dare.”  
   
The challenge almost makes her laugh. Almost. Nothing short of the column collapsing is going to make her move from this spot. She’s outnumbered two to one, and even with her skill, it will be a difficult fight if she decides to engage them. She’s tired, newly-enchanted, has fallen further than she cares to remember, and has an awful kink in her shoulder that won’t let her dodge as fast as she wants to. Besides, the one with the flail is definitely strong enough to do damage of the lasting kind—the permanent, leaves-you-as-a-battered-corpse kind. The other is just as quick as her, if not quicker, and she’s willing to bet no amount of that friendly advice will be able to stop that flail once it’s hurtling toward her.  
   
“On behalf of the Seer of Lith My’athar, I compel you to come out!”  
   
 _You could ask on behalf of the great Solonor Thelandira himself and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash,_ she thinks with as much venom as she can muster and wills herself to become as close to a statue as possible for any living thing.  
   
Three tense minutes pass like that, with Palieth pressed up against the column and trying to breathe as quietly as she can, and then something in the air in front of her shifts, like there’s a distortion in the very fabric of time and space—and a shape yet unformed, undefined, stirs beyond the tear. A summoning spell. She has to move _now._ Curse her pacifistic tendencies.  
  
She steps out from behind the column smoothly, hands held high, palms open in a show of clemency. Both of the figures standing in the center of the room startle at her sudden appearance, and the summoning spell dissolves in a shower of sparks. Any pride she would have gleaned from surprising a drow so comfortable in the darkness is killed the moment she sets eyes on the man, the one with the flail. He’s gigantic, compared to her, with a stern face and a high, proud brow. Her eyes linger on the magnificent horns curling out and upward through the fall of his bright scarlet hair. Demonic blood, then. If she is still stupid enough to say she is not outmatched, she would at least have to admit to being absolutely challenged.  
   
But Palieth is not particularly pompous, and never has been, which is why she can easily picture the man with infernal heritage and the frightening blue eyes snapping her neck with his own two hands.  
   
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”  
   
His voice is a commanding growl. The tone is one practiced in giving orders. It bothers her.  
   
“I mean no harm,” she says as she slowly edges into the corridor of light stretching from the open door.  
   
“That’s not an answer,” the man retorts in displeasure, his grip on the hilt of his flail tightening.  
   
The drow woman at his side is who Palieth guessed it would be. She’s leanly-built, with intelligent eyes and a beautiful, cruel face so characteristic of the elves beneath the ground, but there is kindness in her features nonetheless. She is careful, and skittish, as everyone in this place is wont to be, but Palieth is praying for that good luck that’s been with her all this time to hold for just a little longer. The drow straightens when the light falls on Palieth’s face, and then she steps forward, recognition plain in her stance.  
   
“Valen,” she murmurs, putting a hand on the man’s arm. He doesn’t even look at her. The only indication that he’s acknowledged her addressing him is the flick of one pointed ear. “This is the one the Seer was talking about.”  
   
Pure contempt spreads across the man’s face. Ah. Marvelous first impression.  
   
“The Seer?” Palieth asks quietly, almost regretting it when it makes the tiefling’s eyes return to her.  
   
“The Seer is the one who shelters us here,” the drow answers. “She is an Avatar of Eilistraee—one of the only lights in the Underdark. Please, hear me out. You must know what she intends for you.”  
   
“Intends for me?” the elf all but sputters back. “Do I have any choice in the matter? I don’t even know where I am.”  
   
“You shouldn’t even consider trusting her,” the red-haired man interrupts, turning his eerily clear gaze to the drow woman. When he talks, Palieth can see the slight edge of fangs touching his lips. The scorn in his voice makes something inside her snap and break, and unfamiliar anger fills her.  
   
“I would suggest being at least civil,” she says slowly, as though he might need the time to process the words. “It would improve your chances of walking out of here on two legs.”  
   
Fire stirs in the tiefling’s countenance, and red bleeds into the splendid blue of his eyes. So it is true, then. Anger has ever been the downfall and great curse of those with infernal blood. “You don’t know who you challenge.”  
   
The lack of fear in the gaze she gives him makes the already-rigid line of his shoulders stiffen. “Neither do you.”  
   
“Stop!” the drow woman cries, and sets herself between them. Wispy strands of her lovely, bone-white hair fall and cling to the pauldrons of her leathers as she turns her back on Palieth. An unexpected show of trust—exposing her back to a stranger—and a silent display of skill. She doesn’t think Palieth is enough of a threat to keep an eye on. It is strangely bothersome. “Valen, calm yourself. Ranger, I realize this is all new to you. Please allow us to take you to the Seer. She is the one who knows what to say best. I’m sorry for losing track of you. Halaster was not particularly keen on sharing what he’d done to you.”  
   
That suggestion seems unpalatable to the drow’s big friend. His pale lips press into a thin line of total displeasure, and the spaded tail swaying behind him gives a particularly irritated twitch. Palieth tears her attention away from him and stares at the drow instead. At least that one doesn’t seem to want to kill her. Yet.  
   
“Very well. Lead on.”  
 

* * *

Apparently, she’d made a very inelegant crash landing in the unused portion of the Temple to Eilistraee, a section that was usually only opened and cleared for the celebrations of Spring Night and the evenings of the equinox. She is grateful for it.  
   
The idea of falling flat on her back in the middle of a congregation of drow soldiers and the priestess they revered was a little more embarrassing than the alternative of falling flat in the same way in a deserted temple. Just a little. She feels scrutinized while she’s led through cool, dim-lit corridors, by eyes visible and unseen, but her anxiety evaporates when she’s ushered into an open sitting room and she spies a very familiar figure sitting on a respective plushy cushion in front of a low table set with odd-looking drow food and steaming cups of tea.  
   
She drops to her knees and opens her arms when the direwolf curled up furthest from the table stands and lopes over to her, burying its great head into the crook of her neck. She fists her hands in the beast’s thick, grey fur and inhales—he smells of pine and stone and of the dust in the Underdark, but it’s the smell of home, and it nearly brings tears to her eyes. It seems like an age and a half since she held her familiar last, when in reality it’s been only a few hours.  
   
“Boss! Boss! Boss is safe!”  
   
She has to open another arm for when Deekin rushes at them and catapults himself into her embrace. It’s a little difficult to hug him, wings and crossbow and all, but she manages.  
   
“Hello,” she says to him as she pats him on the scaly head with one tired hand, and laughs weakly when the direwolf pushes his nose into her face. She kisses him on the side of the muzzle and tweaks at one large triangular ear lovingly. “Hello to you too.”  
   
“We thought they were with someone,” a friendly-sounding voice says from somewhere beyond the table, and Palieth stands to face it. “We would have given the wolf a seat, but he wouldn’t let anyone touch him. They appeared in our armory—and were led here with the promise of seeing you again.”  
   
Her hand lingers on Nercane’s head, fingers curling into the fuzz there. The tip of one of the direwolf’s ears stands level with a tall man’s shoulder, and the spread of his jaws wide enough to close around a neck easily. If he wants no one to come near, no one will ever come near—to say the least. The ground by her feet warms with the heat of Nercane’s body, and the corner of one of Deekin’s wings is brushing against her kneecap. She’d forgotten how bare she felt without their company. How soft she’s grown.  
   
“You are the ranger Nathyrra mentioned. I’ve been expecting you.”  
   
The drow woman speaking to her looks older than the rest congregated on the edges of the room. She has hair the color of snow, and is dressed sparingly in a flattering white tunic with the insignia of Eilistraee emblazoned on her chest. Her stare makes Palieth’s skin feel like it’s crawling off of her bones. The priestess has a presence of mind that looks past the physical. Clairvoyants have always unsettled her.  
   
“I’m afraid my… reputation precedes me,” Palieth says carefully, still painfully aware of the mismatched pair behind her. One of Deekin’s hands grasps at the hem of her tunic, and she comfortingly sets a palm on his shoulder. “I’m not even sure what—where—who…”  
   
The woman who can be no one but the Seer waves one delicate hand and descends the stairs leading to the raised platform in front of the table. Her robe flutters around her like a set of moth’s wings. She comes to stand almost two arms’ lengths away from them, though Nercane does not growl or forbid her approach. She seems to understand Palieth’s need for distance, something the ranger is eternally grateful for. The same cannot be said for the tiefling with the insane sense of loyalty. Every third word out of his mouth is “the Seer.” Gods.  
   
“All will be clear in time,” the Seer says, sounding far more reassuring than she should. “If you have any questions, I will answer them to the best of my ability.” Her beautiful eyes narrow at Palieth, as though she’s looking for something not easily found. “You… there’s an enchantment. A binding charm? A truth curse? No. Too heavy. Is it—a geas?”  
   
There’s a surprised intake of breath from behind her, but since she’s turned toward the Seer, she doesn’t know which of the two made the sound. Probably Nathyrra. Valen doesn’t look like he could make any sound, much less gasp. The Seer, however, sounds _horrified_ , which further destroys Palieth’s crazy hope that perhaps she’s entirely overreacting to the placement of the spell.  
   
“Halaster,” the Seer concludes on her own. Palieth just watches her in stony silence, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her (further than it already has). “What did he command you to do?”  
   
“To kill the one called the Valsharess,” Palieth says at last, and at this almost everyone in the room fidgets uncomfortably. What an encouragement. Why can’t anything ever be easy?  
   
“I’m sorry,” the Seer murmurs. She looks truly apologetic. “Not even I can break the geas. I’m not sure Halaster could, either. These things must always run their course.”  
   
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Palieth says, and it sounds more flippant than she’d like the minute it leaves her mouth. “I’ll find my way. I always do.”  
   
“I have no doubt,” the Seer remarks softly, watching her with those unsettlingly bright eyes. “The Underdark is wide and unfriendly. You would do wisely to think before attempting anything.”  
   
One of her hands curls into a fist. There are so many ways to take that sentence that it’s not even faintly funny. “You want me to champion you,” she declares easily with the tired confidence of someone very weary of being right. “You wish to help me kill the Valsharess… how very convenient for us both.”  
   
She hears something that sounds suspiciously like an angry growl rising behind her. “Control your insolent tongue before the Seer!”  
   
The tiefling, of course. She ignores him, keeping her focus on the drow she’s awaiting a response from.  
   
“I haven’t said anything yet,” the drow woman says with a small, knowing smile that drives Palieth’s last intact nerve into absolute oblivion.  
   
“You don’t have to,” she says between clenched teeth. “If you were in league with the Valsharess, I’d either be swinging from some place of undefined height by my neck, or I’d be swinging from that same undefined place _in pieces_ . You haven’t even restrained my familiar. None of your men have raised a hand against me… and last I checked, it was Lolth, Queen Under All That Rises, and not Eilistraee, who was recognized as mother of every drow.”  
   
The name of the Sovereign of Spiders sends a ripple through the congregation. Some reach for the curved drow-fashioned blades at their waists. Others exchange glances full of fear and trepidation. So they’re not untouchable. She’s heard so much about them, seen even less—she wonders how much this experience will teach her of them. How much understanding it will bring to her about herself.  
   
“Seer, allow me to discipline the outsider.”  
   
Palieth wheels on the tiefling the second he finishes his sentence, and his expression melts from angered to startled in all but a heartbeat. Good. Let him see.  
   
“Control your guard dog, or he’ll have competition,” she warns Nathyrra, and the answering snarl from Nercane at her side is enough to silence everyone in the gathering room, soldier or no. Even the tiefling takes a step back when the direwolf circles her protectively, hackles raised pin-straight, lips pulled back in a horrific scowl and inches worth of incisors bared for all to see. Deekin has been uncharacteristically quiet for some time now.  
   
They don’t usually deal in ordinary situations, of course, but this is somewhat on the side of the extraordinary. Even for them.  
   
“It has been a very long day for all of us,” the Seer interjects gently, bringing Palieth’s attention back to her. “Tensions are running high. This city has been balancing on a knife's edge for very many years, Savior. First with the worship of Our Lady, Eilistraee, and then with the open defiance of this tyrant. Every day the Valsharess extends her influence a little more, and any hope for a peaceful future wanes. I know what you’ve done. I’ve seen it. Though you may not wish to be here, by fate or chance, our paths have crossed. I implore you—help us.”  
   
Palieth doesn’t even have to look over her shoulder to know the tiefling is scowling. She can practically feel the ill intent washing out of his every pore. Gods be willing, she won’t have to deal with him any more than absolutely necessary. It’s been a very long time since anything irritated her half as much as the half-man in the obnoxiously green armor standing a few paces behind her. Palieth sighs roughly, combing a free hand through what little hair she has left, frowning at the feeling of dust and pebbles and Sune knows what else catching there. She abandons the endeavor, letting her hand drop in irritation.  
   
“It would be stupid to refuse,” the ranger says, and Nercane presses his side to her legs in answer to the wash of disappointment and frustration that flows through her.  
   
The Seer looks at her with something that’s almost regret. Oh no. That’s the ‘I have more to tell you’ look that she so often gets from employers that have waited until her acceptance to tell her why they _really_ need her services. But this is not the surface… and she’s been volunteered for this instead of volunteering herself. She braces for impact.  
   
“I’m afraid that’s not all.”  
   
Here it comes.  
   
“The Valsharess has—we don’t know how—managed to summon and bind… an Archduke from the Nine Hells.”  
   
Everyone gathered in the Seer’s audience chamber expects one thing or another from the strange elf that fell through miles of solid rock and willingly wandered the Undermountain for the better part of the month. Maybe a reaction of abject terror. Surprise. Dread and awe. Shock, at the very least. None of the drow (and there are many of them, General Imloth and Nathyrra included), not even their tiefling leader, know what to do when the slight ranger stares at the Seer for one moment longer before bursting into hopeless, ringing laughter.  
   
 _Gods preserve us,_ Valen thinks.  
   
 _She’s trusted our lives to a madwoman._  


* * *

It takes an hour and several cups of very strong drow tea for her to regain any semblance of calm. By then, she’s sure most of the Seer’s followers think she’s either insane or a lost cause, both of which suit her just fine.  
   
The Seer has so much to tell her that there’s time for little other than some hurried refreshments and snacks. Drow food is just as odd as she’d thought it be, though the tastes are nothing like she could have predicted. Palieth is no stranger to the lands of Faerûn or the oddities it houses, but drow food is something she has not yet had the… privilege of trying. There are tiny rolls of crunchy, fried dough no bigger than one of her knuckles that are filled with what seems to be a borderline sweet bean paste that’s hot with spices. These are her favorites, though she does make rounds on the trays the Seer has some of the footmen offer her. She tries desperately to focus on the food, but some of what the Seer is saying bleeds past that barrier anyway.  
   
When the explanations have faded into a strained silence, she finishes the last of the dark tea Nathyrra poured for her and takes a deep breath, patting the dust from her sleeves.  
   
“So… you’re hoping that I will singlehandedly somehow stop a drow matron inflated with power and greed, backed by what sounds like three fourths of the Underdark’s most dangerous and nearly undefeatable troops,” Palieth says, wiping her mouth politely with a square of linen.  
   
The Seer makes a face. “Well, when you put it that way…”  
   
“Boss has done crazier!” Deekin pipes up, instruments rattling and clacking around him. His silence from before seems to have evaporated. “Deekin knows. Deekin’s watched. Me is wondering, has Seer lady read—”  
   
“—and that’s our cue to go,” Palieth blurts, smoothly severing Deekin’s sentence in half. She hastily stands. Not much discomfits her as much as the little kobold literally singing her praises. She loves him to pieces, down to the last shiny scale, but long epic songs and lays detailing her honor (or lack thereof) and greatly embellished tellings of all the times she very nearly lost her head are things she'd rather avoid, if only on the bad days.   
   
“You are tired. I understand. Nathyrra will lead you to your quarters. The temple has been repurposed, as you know. It is quiet. I remain here, myself. I prefer it over the noise of the city,” the Seer tells her, rising as well.  
   
“Thank you for everything,” the elf says stiffly. It’s truthful—in part, anyway. She can’t feel grateful for becoming the apparent scion of Lith My’athar’s army in one night, but she’s not in shackles and she’s not being coerced, which is truly something to take in consideration when you’re dealing with the Underdark. She will deal with _that_ , however, tomorrow. Her priorities right now involves hot water and bristled washing brushes, though she’s not sure a hundred baths will make her feel like the filth of the Underdark is no longer clinging to her.  
   
She bows politely to the Seer and leads her ragtag companions, all two of them, away under Nathyrra’s guidance. The tiefling (who has been standing in the shadows in the far corner of the room like a total _creep_ ) follows closely behind, much to her disappointment. She’d thought he would stay by the Seer’s side, especially after the choice tidbits he had spoken up to add during her second, prolonged conversation with the Seer.  
   
“Are you sure, Seer? What do we really know about this… this woman? She could be the death of us all!”  
   
 _Yes, Seer,_ she’d thought crankily, _how could you?_ But her pride would not allow her to agree aloud, and pride is one of the few things she has in abundance. His naming of her as a woman is a step up from being called ‘this elven stranger,’ she supposes.  
   
“Pretty lady, why is Goatman following us?”  
   
She has to restrain a snicker at Deekin’s nickname. The kobold has a gift for them. Nathyrra, who is not bound by something as wilful as the tiefling’s temper, laughs openly.  
   
“He is a sworn protector of the Seer.”  
   
Deekin blinks and throws an owlish glance over his shoulder at Valen, whom Palieth is certain is already glowering. “So…?”  
   
“So,” Nathyrra says lightly, “the safety of the Savior is his main concern now. The Underdark is not a friendly place, little one.”  
   
Palieth does not doubt it. She has previously and very recently experienced the brazenness and determination of drow assassins. That had been a first, and she doesn’t have many of those left. She prefers not to remember the feeling of knowing everything that she possessed in this world had been _stolen_ . What a silly thing to be upset over, especially as a ranger, one who is supposed to be detached from worldly, material goods—but the equipment she’d retrieved from the drow thief were some of the only belongings she would and will allow herself to care about. The thought of never having her father’s cloak back makes something raw and yet unhealed tear open in her heart. She doesn’t want to think about it.  
   
The air of the temple is on the chilly side, and the room Nathyrra leads them to through twisting corridors fairly sizable, with gossamer curtains in place of a door. There are two beds, Palieth notes with growing dread, both big enough for the average drow, one against each side of the room. A dressing screen, a modest dresser, and another one of those low tables hemmed in with sitting cushions are the only other bits of furniture in the room, and all are angled to the left. The place smells of wet stone and fresh incense. They must have cleaned it not but an hour ago.  
   
“And this is it,” Nathyrra says, stepping aside with her hands on her hips. “I hope you sleep well.”  
   
“My thanks,” Palieth mumbles. Her fears are confirmed when she notices Valen lean himself against the doorjamb as though he has no intention of leaving any time soon. “I’m assuming you won’t be staying?”  
   
Nathyrra gives her a small, predatory smile. Traitor. “No, that’ll be Valen’s honor. You can find me in the barracks any time. The temple bath is just two hallways down, second door on the right. Can’t miss it.”  
   
Praise the heavens. _A bath_ . Nercane is settling in by the bed on the west side of the room when Palieth turns to watch Nathyrra go. She gives the drow a small goodbye waggle of the fingers, and feels bizarre and cumbersome when the assassin vanishes. Nathyrra might be a friend, in time, and Palieth would rather stay in a room with her a hundred times over. She’s not stupid—she can deduce that the Seer greatly trusts the tiefling, and that the possibility of strife between them could severely endanger their cohesion as a team. Team. Ha. The man would have had her sent back by now, if he could. She’d have _left,_ by now, if that were an option, and yet here they are.  
   
“Say it before you burst,” she says as she peels off her gloves and drops them on the bed. Valen twitches in disbelief—she’s guessing none but a choice few speak to him the way she does. He’ll have to get used to it.  
   
He straightens, watching her with renewed, if guarded, interest. His eyes cut like ice. “The Seer believes you are our prophetical savior; our only hope of defeating the Valsharess. I, however, do not believe in prophecies.”  
   
“We’ve established as much,” Palieth agrees wearily. If he keeps repeating himself like this she may just stop listening altogether. She’s good at that. “You also seem to dislike me greatly. Is there anything else you’d like to say before I decide to drop this mockery of civility?”  
   
He scowls, all fang and twisted lip. “Let me finish,” he says, and when he shifts, the lantern light catches on the edges of his armor, gleaming like a polished emerald. “I have not set aside my suspicions yet. But… if you are, by any chance, the savior the Seer believes you to be, I will give you a chance to prove it.”  
   
She barely stops herself from thanking him sarcastically. The fatigue has entirely destroyed her good sense and the scope of her threadbare manners—bush manners, as Drogan used to call them. The memory brings her pain. She has to rest, erase all this tiredness, and awaken with a cleared mind. Across from her, Valen’s expression softens, if only by a bit. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light.  
   
“As to disliking you—I don’t know you well enough to dislike you. It is a moot point.”  
   
 _Until we spend more time together and you resolve it’s best you lop my head off_ . It’s happened before, countless times. She doesn’t think this severe, orderly man will think any different from the last ten paladins that found her lack of care shocking and her embracement of chaos vulgar and unbecoming. She does always seem to attract those that at one point want to kill her. It’s a quality she’s not quite fond of.  
   
“If that’s all,” Palieth says, and slides out of her boots, “I’m going to retire for the night.” Truthfully, she’s not sure if it’s night or day, though it doesn’t really matter. She feels exhausted enough to sleep for the next century.  
   
“Where are you going?” Valen asks gruffly, and the look she gives him makes him fidget.  
   
“By all means, ser,” she offers and shrugs. “Follow me to the bath. If you sit close enough, you may be able to tell the Seer what soap I like to use.”  
   
She’s so preoccupied with folding her things—lovingly resting aside her father’s cloak—and gathering spare tunics and a length of drying linen from the dresser that she completely misses the mortified flush that rises to the tiefling’s pale face. Deekin, however, is much more observant. He’s begun scratching away at his parchment with an enchanted quill by the time Valen realizes what he’s doing, and the sight is so outlandish that the tiefling is befuddled out of even inquiring about it.  
   
The ranger bends to give Nercane an encouraging sweep on the fur of his head before she goes, leaving behind a very funny and very unlikely combination of housemates.  
 

* * *

The rivvil is unlike anything he’s ever seen.  
   
She is slight, and walks with controlled, coiled grace, as though there is too much tension gathered inside her. Her awareness of everything is a strange mix of predator and prey—she is cautious, but dangerous, that much he knows just by looking at her; and her colors are unlike anything he’s become used to after years among the drow. The dusky brown tone of her skin is more evident to him after she comes back from her prolonged stay in the temple baths. She looks drained, like everything that could ever happen to her has been happening to her all day long. She doesn’t even look at him as she pushes the covers on the bed open.  
   
Valen shifts in his seat, trying not to let his eyes linger on her too long, especially after he realizes she’s wearing nothing but an overlarge tunic. He can see the muscles in her admirable legs working as she sorts the belongings she left on the bed beforehand. She brushes the wet strands of blue-black hair out of her face and then sits on the bed, and the unmistakable ease of relief passes over her countenance.  
   
“I was wondering when you’d come back. I thought you’d drowned!”  
   
The tiefling almost leaps up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, but what keeps him seated is the amused look on the ranger’s face.  
   
“Hello, Enserric. Had a sound sleep?” she asks, and Valen is truly wondering if she has actually gone mad when she props the longsword beside her bow up against the wall.  
   
“It was dismal. This inside of this scabbard smells—”  
   
“—absolutely fetid, I know,” the elf finishes, rolling the sleeves of the tunic up her arms. “I have tidings that may better your mood.”  
   
“Oh? Do tell, fairest of ladies, what could possibly make this horrible, horrible state of mine bearable?”  
   
“It’s almost certain we’ll be killing things tomorrow. Sweet-tasting things,” Palieth says as she slides her legs under the covers. The longsword glows with a malevolent red light.  
   
“Oh, marvelous, marvelous! You do know how to treat a sword, my dear. But please, do keep that mongrel of yours off of any of my fair share of treats. You know how his greediness vexes me,” the longsword… whines. Valen never knew longswords did whining—or any sort of talking at all. The direwolf at the foot of the bed growls menacingly at the last bit, though.  
   
“I will do my best,” the as-of-yet-unproven savior assures the weapon.  
   
“And do tell the horned fellow he’s not _quite_ as subtle as he thinks he is. His staring is putting me out.”  
   
Valen feels the last of his valiantly retained dignity die away when the elf tilts one shapely brow at him, almost smiling. How can a longsword see, anyway?  
   
“Goodnight, Enserric,” is all the ranger says, and the disembodied voice echoing from within the scabbard scoffs as though the very idea of a good night is totally preposterous.  
   
The next few minutes are a bit of a bustle. The elf settles herself and then makes room—Valen doesn’t understand why until she yanks the kobold up to her bed despite its loud and repetitive protests, and silences him with the fluff of a pillow. A surface elf with a heart. Wonders never cease, says the part in him that has been conditioned by the drow. All he’s ever heard about the kin the drow have aboveworld has been steeped in negativity and odium. The surfacers and the drow hate each other like nothing else. He knows the bias isn’t as evident among the Seer’s following, but as for the rest… it is a prominent prejudice. Much like a lot of things are, in drow society. It is what it is, he supposes.  
   
The ranger leans over to douse the lantern hanging by her bedside. The flame dies with a quiet hiss. He does not plan on sleeping, and is still very much awake to see the elf losing consciousness just about as soon as she lies down. Her breathing evens and steadies, growing deep and soft. The dark of her hair and the delicate points of her ears are in stark contrast to the starched white of the pillow beneath her head. She doesn’t look much like a threat like this, with one arm slung around a snoring kobold.  
   
Her guardian beast is watching him, its giant head pillowed on its front paws, yellow eyes bright in the gloom. Even if he were stupid enough to want to try something after today, he would not do it now. Not while in sight of the wolf. That creature would, and no doubt has, killed for her, as surely as he would and has for the Seer. Just as well. Valen is not a picky man.  
   
Grudging company is better than none at all.

* * *

The next morning, he nearly falls over himself while getting out of the room in time.  
   
Elves, apparently, do not have the same standards of decency as the rest of the world. She hadn’t even given him any warning before stripping down so she could get into her change of spare leathers, and her eyes had followed him with distant interest when he’d excused himself—so it’s either cultural difference or the fact that she’s realized he’s not as acclimated to drow society as he makes out to be. He’s not sure which one would make him less annoyed. By the time she appears again outside the temple, _fully clothed_ , wolf and kobold at her side, he’s managed to make the thundering embarrassment calm.  
   
“You waited?” she says with surprise, and he realizes he never got her name.  
   
“Goatman seems angry, Boss.”  
   
He ignores the upright lizard.  
   
“I would be a poor bodyguard indeed if I let you wander as you pleased,” he replies, crossing his arms in a gesture she’s sure will become increasingly familiar if he’s as stubborn as he is now about keeping tabs on her.  
   
“There aren’t very many places I could go,” the ranger observes pointedly. There’s an edge to her words. He knows she’s referring to the geas. “And since I rather like breathing, I think I’m going to keep with the course of action that will guarantee my continued survival.”  
   
“Most wise, my dear,” the sword strapped to her back pipes up in his reedy voice. “Your company is less insufferable than anyone else’s. I would be sad to see you go.”  
   
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” she sighs, and then puts her hands on her hips, looking around with her intelligent brown eyes. “You must have a smith here, no? Someone has to be making all that wonderful armor. Please point me in his direction.”  
   
He half-frowns, half-scowls at her. What is she playing at? “You can stop trying to act casual now. I know—what you think.” He winces at the end of his sentence. Clumsy. The sleepless night has done him less favors than he thought it would.  
   
“What I _thought_ was that perhaps we could stop being at each other’s throats long enough to make this arrangement work,” she says carefully, but the look in her eyes is now cold and distant. It doesn’t suit her, the way it didn’t suit her the first time he saw her, covered in violet dust and smeared with drow blood. What a momentously stupid thought. “Do you _want_ me to be angry and suspicious? That seemed to be your role, but if sharing it is what you wish, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”  
   
“You must know what I am,” he says at last, getting increasingly irritated with the detail that all his skills in debate and subtle disapproval seem to disappear when it concerns the rivvil.  
   
Now she looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What would you have me do about it?” she asks as though he’s just told her to move a mountain.  
   
The question takes him off guard, after years of disgust and shock and unhidden prejudgment. “Do you even know…?”  
   
“I’ve been in the company of tieflings before,” the ranger says, now crossing her arms. She doesn’t flinch away from his direct gaze—another thing he’s not used to. “How young do you think I am?”  
   
He’s prepared an entire tirade, but it dissipates at her words. “I… you have?”  
   
“I have,” she confirms with a nod.  
   
They stand there across each other, the silence awkward, stretching between them like an unwanted reminder of the extent to which they do not know each other.  
   
Valen does not call himself friendly, but the Underdark is unchanging, much like the drow that rule it. It’s always one House or the other pitting itself against another clan that they’ve had a blood-feud with for the last fifty hundred years, or an enemy they’ve been trying to kill for just as long—this elf is an unknown variable. He remembers next to nothing about the surface except for the incessant glare of the sun and the terrified reactions he garnered from anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across him, but there she is, and the only annoyance in her face is probably present because of his constant and unrelenting attempts to provoke her ire.  
   
The Savior sighs again and the aggravation in her expression drains away. “I have traveled long and seen many things, General Shadowbreath. I… if I judged you because of some stupid ideal cowards conjure to comfort themselves while they wallow in their ignorance, I would be no better than them. Much like you said last night, I do not know you. When we first met I was—not myself. If you must distrust me so openly, at least do it quietly. It spares me the headache.”  
   
“Well said, lovely heroine mine!” the pest of a sword squawks, rattling in its scabbard.  
   
He has nothing left to say. He can only stare dumbly after her as she walks off (even though she has absolutely no idea where she’s going) and descends the temple stairs, the kobold close at her heels. He’s ready to follow when he realizes her familiar has remained behind, and is looking at him in a way that can only be described as triumphantly. The intelligence of the creature unsettles him. It gives a perfunctory, happy snort, and then trots away after its master, leaving him at the top of the stairs, hands clenched, tail swishing indignantly.  
   
And he still doesn’t have her name.  
 

* * *

He finds her at Rizolvir’s, bowed over a selection of arrows. She’s engaged the smith without much effort, apparently.  
   
It leaves a sour taste in his mouth. No one she’s met thus far seems to have had much trouble accepting her. He remembers his first days here—fraught with doubt and hostility—and how long it took for the drow to consider him as anything more than a threat sent from the Hells, much less being ready to follow his orders. He’s _earned_ every bit of his presence here, among the cunning and the sly, with his strength and fortitude and the wisdom to know where it would be best applied. He’s earned it. And she simply waltzed in and erased it all as though it had never been.  
   
“You’re glaring at her again.”  
   
He hears something in his neck pop back into place with how quickly he lifts his head to better look at Nathyrra, who seems to have materialized out of thin air to stand beside him. She looks as impeccable as always, not a strand of hair out of place, her moon-bright eyes gleaming with impish glee. She laughs shortly before she looks back at the target of his dissatisfaction.  
   
“She doesn’t seem all bad, does she?” Nathyrra says as the ranger turns to the smith with another bit of information they cannot hear at this distance, both their forms delineated in the fierce glow of the forge.  
   
“She doesn’t _seem_ like anything,” Valen says back, just stopping himself from crossing his arms again. Enough of that and they’ll start thinking he’s surly.  
   
Nathyrra smiles softly. This one is genuine, not tempered at all with her usual put-up cheerfulness. “It’s only been a day, Ser Grumps-A-Lot. Or, rather, the tail-end of one. Give her a chance.”  
   
“I am,” he grits out, feeling that this conversation is eerily echoing an exchange you’d hear between a mother and a child.  
   
“A chance she will get out of in _one piece_ ,” she presses on firmly, her brows tweaking at him. Nathyrra has always been unafraid of him—even in the days when he was still new to the Underdark and little better than a raging beast, still having difficulties with the Seer’s teachings and the finer nuances of humanity. She’d never flinched or judged like her brethren, and had always offered her blades and her shoulder in turn. She is his dearest friend, beside Imloth, but it’s not something she’ll ever know if he can help it. She has a high enough opinion of herself, even without the whole female drow thing.  
   
“I’m running out of chances like that to give. I’m not sure I had many of them in the first place,” he says. Admitting it out loud makes the truth of it feel heavier than ever. Nathyrra nudges him with playful force.  
   
“I know you, Valen,” she says as she lays a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not as hateful as you make yourself out to be. She’s a perceptive woman. It won’t take much.”  
   
“When did you become her representative?” he asks, maybe a little more spitefully than he wants to be. He refuses to call her ‘the Savior’ until she does something that makes her worthy of that title. Not that that’s ever going to happen, though it might be a tad difficult trying to find new things to call her when he doesn’t even remember her name. He could resort to race identifying, which is how the drow go about their business (“You there, male!” and “You, demonspawn!” come to mind), but she may not take to that kindly. Few surfacers do, he’s been told. Which would be useful to bear in mind if he cared for what she thought. Which he doesn’t.  
   
Especially not after this morning.  
   
“You don’t even know her name, do you?” Nathyrra says, her sentence ending in an upward note of disbelief.  
   
“Are you _sure_ you’re not a mind-flayer?”  
   
“It’s Palieth. She’s pleasant enough, though she reminded me of you when I first met her.”  
   
“I highly doubt that,” he says, snorting.  
   
“Well, doubt less,” she drawls in her ‘I’m giving you an order, listen to it’ voice that she reserves especially for young males or new recruits. “She’s as quiet as any drow. Moves like smoke. Nearly put one of her pretty daggers through my throat. Wonderful inlay on them, though.”  
   
“I would trust you to observe such things in a time of danger,” he admits, and it earns him another one of those suspiciously hard playful nudges. He has a hard time imagining anyone outmatching Nathyrra in stealth and agility. Very few are quick enough to survive in the Underdark, and Nathyrra is one of them… one of the best. He’s seen her in action, and compliments do not come easy from Valen Shadowbreath.  
   
“My point is, I had a bit of time to get to know her,” Nathyrra continues in that same stolid tone. “She is wary, and maybe a little too solemn, but she has a good heart.”  
   
“Everyone is too solemn for you,” he points out. This time she growls and smacks him on the arm in earnest. She always did resort to violence when he didn’t listen. Very drow of her.  
   
“I’m not sitting here spouting soft words so I can see how close I can get to imitating the priestesses, you brute,” she says and turns to look him in the eye.  
   
Tens of yards away the elf—Palieth—is fitting one of her new arrows to her bow and drawing the string, aiming for the dummies at the edge of the smith’s square, he guesses. She pulls back till the curl of her fingers is brushing against her cheek. Surprising strength, from one yet so small. Her arm doesn’t even tremble as she keeps the string in place. How many years has she drawn with that same motion and followed through? _How young do you think I am?_  
   
That might warrant getting a proper answer for, later. Somehow.  
   
“Listen to me,” Nathyrra says, and he faces her too. “It’s not going to be easy. You don’t follow the Seer’s ways—and you know I’m more of a pragmatist than one likely to pin things so important on only faith—but I think… I think this may actually work. I have a good feeling about her, Valen. She’s capable.”  
   
He doesn’t reply, and he knows that the silence isn’t taken as an insult. He’s never been one to talk much, anyway, and he doubts Nathyrra will be as welcoming when she realizes his worries haven’t been allayed. She is a fair friend, one he’s never deserved, but she is stubborn in measure, too, and never happy when you don’t give way to her logic. He just keeps looking ahead, at the stranger who has upheaved so much about the world he thought was his, with the kobold at her side and the wolf on the other, and all the while, though he has learned to kill optimism and foolish confidences—he comes the closest to prayer that he’s ever done in his long life.  
 

 

_Let’s hope capable will be enough._

 


	2. The Path of Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since writing is the best and most effective way to feel better, i'm not surprised i finished this in two days. therapeutic writing is great, aha. thanks for the kudos and the wonderful comments. they make me feel tonnes better :') 
> 
> also, grumpy Valen who doesn't want to admit he likes the Savior just fine. stubborn tiefling.

“You’d do best not to entangle yourself in drow business while you stay here.”

It’s the first thing he’s said to her all morning. She turns to look at him over her shoulder and quirks a brow. Would saying _I know_ be too petulant? She supposes she’ll have to find out.

“I know,” she says aloud, and watches his face harden like settling stone. Definitely too petulant. It serves him right, somehow—he’s been watching her the way a circling buzzard eyes a dying cow from the moment they met at the temple stairs, always keeping just a few steps behind them, always watching with those frightening eyes, always _frowning_ like something is displeasing him. Can he smile? Perhaps he’s physically incapable. She isn’t disconcerted by the weight of his gaze, or its intensity. Maybe he’s used to people backing down and bowing out of his way because of intimidation.

“I was only suggesting as much for the continued upkeep of your wellbeing,” he remarks stiffly, as though the words pain him to say.

“Don’t lose sleep over me, General,” she says as they cross over through the commons and the marketplace and the docks come into view, along with the glittering expanse of the dark river that runs through Lith My’athar like a dark lance. It smells of decay and sour things, and its waters are too opaque to see through to the bottom. Just as well. She doesn’t really want to know what’s floating around in there, whether be it twisted Underdark creatures or the bodies of those the river has claimed over time. She has enough nightmares of her own to last her ten lifetimes of elves.

Valen draws a steadying breath, like a mother who is fighting not to lose patience with her child. “You are my responsibility now. For good or ill, the state of your safety and health is something the Seer will hold me accountable for.”

Ah, there we go. The Seer. And here she’d thought he’d begun to like her. She keeps her head turned forward as she talks.

“Your concern is staggering, but you’ll soon find it is mostly misplaced,” Palieth tells him, and listens to him lengthen his stride to keep up with her surprisingly fast pace. “I’ve survived alone before, and did that in the Undermountain for quite a while before Halaster had a portal suck me in and spit me out on your doorstep. I may be out of my element—even so, it’s not like I’ve been turned useless.”

He lets out something of a hybrid of a sigh and a huff, and whatever it is sounds exasperated. “I did not mean to imply you were unskilled.”

“Didn’t you, if only a little? If the Seer thought I could handle myself she wouldn’t have assigned you to dog my every step like a cranky bloodhound,” she says, surprising herself with her candor and acerbity. She hasn’t spoken like this to anyone in—in ages. “I need a guide, however, and you need to assure yourself I’m not going to somehow turn you over to the Valsharess though it’s _practically impossible_ for me, so I suppose the compromise is satisfactory.”

Valen presses his lips into one firm line that screams of irritation. They don’t move much as he speaks. “It would be better if we did not antagonize each other.”

Now she looks at him, brown eyes full of fire. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you threatened to cave my skull in.”

“I technically never—”

“Are you two _still_ at it?” the enchanted sword on Palieth’s back complains loudly. The ranger doesn’t seem to notice it’s even started talking, though its grating tone sets Valen’s teeth on edge. “It’s getting quite tedious to listen to you both nattering on like old biddies fighting over the last bowl of honeyed porridge. You, horned fellow. You’d do best not to doubt her at every turn. You haven’t seen her work a dagger like I have!”

“Deekin knows,” the kobold adds helpfully. “Boss is good with sharp things.”

“Quite so,” Enserric agrees, sounding as content as a sword can sound. Valen still has difficulty believing the thing can even see.

“I’m sure alluding to my menacing him with a sharp thing is helping those trust issues,” she says, throwing a glance at the tiefling over her shoulder again. “Didn’t you say you were going to take a nap?”

An indignant scarlet washes out over her back through Enserric’s scabbard. “And I would have, if I could have gotten to sleep through all the _yakking_.”

“You’ve made your point,” Valen grits out, but the sword only laughs an incredibly jolly and human-sounding laugh.

“Yes, do try to frighten me, that is certainly going to work. My goodness, but you are rather crabby, aren’t you?”

“You talk boldly for something that could be melted down on a forge to make teaspoons,” the tiefling says, and this time it’s the ranger who chuckles.

“You can’t,” she says, her lips curling up in a smile. “I’ve tried.”

“Don’t remind me,” Enserric sniffs. His contempt is clear. “For a moment, I thought you’d succeeded.”

“Could you blame me?” Palieth asks. “You hadn’t told me anything about the entire _I use your life-force while we fight_ predicament, and I’d felt like death warmed over. You could have been lying about anything else.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t,” the sword reminds her quickly, and something around its hilt rattles. It’s a string of white beads inscribed with runes Valen cannot recognize. “And now you’ve put the annulment charm on me and all is well! We can fight evil together without you stumbling around like a drunken clout.”

The elf snorts. “Very mannerly of you.”

“I do exist to please, my dear.”

And it’s as though they’ve entirely forgotten his presence, just like that. He’s not sure why it bothers him this much, or that it bothers him at all. Maybe it’s because he’s never shared easy camaraderie like that, except for with a select few here in the Underdark—even Nathyrra is ever critical of the way he fights, though she now admits it’s more than effective. He supposes he shouldn’t expect clear-cut compliments from the drow. They’re a race that do everything in roundabouts, always dancing around what they really mean, speaking in double-meanings and entendres that are taken the other way the minute you make your intentions certain. It’s infuriating.

He only returns to being as aware as he’d like when they stop in front of Cavallas.

The dockmaster is as enigmatic and off-putting as ever, in his tall black cloak and shadowed hood—the only thing visible beneath the cowl is the glint of a mask, hard-edged and unyielding. It’s unsettling. No one really knows what Cavallas is, or why he’s here, he’s just always been, like the rocks or the spiders or the feeling of despair that hangs over the Underdark like a heavy pall. Leaders come and go, houses rise and fall in prominence, but Cavallas stays, unchanging as the tides of the river he calls himself the master of.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Cavallas says, his voice a gurgling hiss that echoes in the mouth of his mask. It sounds like something you’d hear from a dying man. The ranger doesn’t seem much perturbed.

“Almost everyone is,” she replies and stands back respectfully to incline her head. “You are Cavallas, I presume? Valen said you would lend us your aid against the Valsharess.”

Cavallas watches her for a moment, the expressionless surface shining below the lip of his hood making the action all the more disquieting. “Do not mistake me for something I am not,” he says at last. “I will—help you, yes, but don’t take it as proof of my being an ally.”

Palieth nods. “I understand.”

“Do you? Strange. It seems so. A welcome change,” the dockmaster admits. “The Valsharess seeks to control everything she does not understand. Even the Dark River and its untamed waters will not be able to stand against her magic for long. Her desire to enslave it cannot go unchallenged. This is why I will offer you what knowledge I have at my disposal, and take you wherever you wish.”

“Good to hear. Let’s do business, then,” Palieth says, hooking her fingers through the loop of her belt and looking at the dockmaster with that steady gaze Valen is coming to understand is a specialty of hers. “Tell me all you know about the islands.”

* * *

“I thought learning about the islands was the precursor to actually _getting_ on a boat. Why, pray tell, are we heading _back_ to the encampment?”

Palieth startles him when she stops in the middle of the training grounds, dropping her rucksack and unclipping her cloak, sliding out of the strap of the longsword’s sheath that sits across her chest—they fall from her like the dried halves of a cocoon fall from the new body of the moths that live in the deepest caves of the Underdark. Underneath the billowing cloak there is form and discipline, lean strength and controlled poise. He’s never really looked at her in anything other than darkness, and when he has had the chance he’s been focused on other things, like the Seer or dampening the urge to smash something with Devil’s Bane.

He could almost convince himself her hair is blue, in this light.

“We’re not going anywhere together unless I’ve fought you first,” she says, and he’s begun to nod when he realizes in full what she’s just suggested.

Deekin gasps. “Boss, you sure that good idea?”

Her wolf doesn’t seem to agree, either, if the half-eaten snarl it gives is anything to go by.

“Are you mad?” he exclaims, drawing the attention of Imloth, who turns away from his training officers. Palieth unsheathes her hunting knife in one smooth movement, flipping it over in her hand without pause and gripping its hilt in reverse like a brigand.

“No,” she responds lightly. She looks very serious. So serious that the wolf and the kobold stand aside, dragging the longsword with them. “The best way to learn how your companions work is through sparring. Besides, it’ll give you a chance to wave that flail at me. You want to, don’t you?”

“Remember what I said about badly-worded things, my dear?”

“Enserric, with all due respect—shut up.”

“Duly noted.”

“So?” the ranger asks, insistent. “Are you willing?”

Valen’s upper lip twitches. He notices the officers have lowered their weapons and are watching, as is Imloth. He hates having an audience almost as much as he hates being goaded into doing things he doesn’t want. But does he really not want to fight her? She’s _offering_. And it’s not as if he’d have a problem with it. What worries him is that he may enjoy the challenge a little too much.

“I could kill you,” he says without preamble. She doesn’t flinch. Did he expect anything else?

“No, you couldn’t,” is all she says before she darts forward. He has to sidestep her to avoid the rush and is ready to make a contemptuous comment about her speed when she straightens, smiles at him like she’s seen something she likes, and says, very shortly, “Good.”

And then she vanishes.

The gathered crowd murmurs in surprise, but Valen knows better—she didn’t vanish, that was the shock talking. She’s just moving very, very fast. Even Nathyrra would have trouble seeing her coming. His eyes are no use here. They’re not nearly as good as anything elven heritage could offer him, so he lets his focus loosen and relies on his ears, which, though not comparable to the eerily keen hearing of the drow, are very close in ability. He’s got only a second to regroup before he swerves to meet her strike. Her blade clashes against the chain of Devil’s Bane and sparks fly from the impact.

“You’re faster than you look,” she comments, and he frowns. “It’s a compliment.”

Gone again. He whirls once more and they make contact just like they did a second ago, but this time she draws back a hand and makes to punch him in the face—he moves back to avoid the blow but it never comes, because while he’s distracted she swipes his feet from under him in a startling show of strength. A feint. Damn.

He lands like a boulder, armor ringing around him, with her dagger pointed at the exposed softness of his throat.

Palieth looks down at him over the straight slope of her nose. “Going easy on me isn’t going to help.”

The last threads of his patience fray and snap.

“Fine!” he growls and sits up straight, grappling her leg in a hold that will surely have her stumbling.

Her expression doesn’t even change as she lifts the other foot, distributes her remaining weight on the limb he’s _grabbing_ , and kicks him away with enough force to send his spit flying across the ground. Her balance is ridiculously good. He’ll find no weakness there. He rolls with the momentum and brings himself upright, and stands across from her, angered, and bleeding from the lip. He needs to know more about her before he goes charging in, or else this is always going to end with him on the ground.

A big bulk of all the opponents he’s ever fought matched him in strength, brute force to brawn. That’s all about attrition, about beating each other before you get too tired to lose the fight, a contest of wills. You take one step back and the enemy advances. You press on him and he retreats. Demons and devils are mindless, gripped by the fury of their blood, one he knows all too intimately. In a battle with someone as aware and sharp as the drow, that is his greatest disadvantage. The drow think as much as they move while they make war, and it is something that makes them some of the most deadly aggressors in the Underdark. He suspects Palieth won’t be any different.

He mustn’t give into the desire to go after her. He has to wait, be smart, and catch her where she cannot escape. That’s the only chance he’ll have of ending this. All fighters have a pattern, no matter how unnoticeable. The more skilled you are, the better you conceal those patterns. But everyone has a tell, a signal—some sort of tic.

The knowledge won’t be any help if his eyes can’t keep up with her, he thinks unhappily to himself.

“Are you going to do something?” he asks, hand tightening on Devil’s Bane.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Are _you_?”

“Isn’t that the point of fighting?”

She smiles a bit. “Some would say, yes.”

He stiffens, and hefts the flail up on his shoulder. “Very well, then.”

Valen gives her no quarter after that. They exchange blows, fast as lightning, being thrown away by the force of the knockbacks, then meeting again and again in the middle, neither foregoing the space they have.

They are evenly matched. She fights with fluid grace and precise lethality, though she never takes her chance whenever he leaves himself open to her—amateur mistakes, but he’s never gone up against someone as agile as her, and he feels clumsy in attempting to keep her pace. He’d retain more dignity in trying to punch the wind. More than once she spins out from under the swing of the flail, or bends so far over backward to avoid its spikes that her spine makes a neat almost-half crescent parallel to the ground. He’s only ever seen a Red Sister as flexible as that.

He catches her a single time, when he sacrifices defense for an opportunity to win her arm. She tries to wriggle free but all that ends up accomplishing is bringing them closer together—this time, he’s not letting go. He locks their ankles and curls a hand around her throat, the pointed claws of his gauntlet biting into her throat. No escape.

“Match,” he says, but she just raises a brow.

“Draw,” she returns—and then he feels the tip of her dagger digging into the exposed side where the two halves of his breastplate meet. If this were a real battle, she would be having trouble breathing, and he would be bleeding entrails. Marvelous.

They part with deliberation, and Palieth returns the hunting knife to its sheath. The beads of sweat on his forehead aren’t many. He wasn’t tried to his limits, and neither was she, so he supposes this was a bout of sparring after all. The slight wear of battle doesn’t show on her the way it does him. Her dark skin is only a little more prone to shine at the forehead and the collar, but otherwise she isn’t even winded. She seems about to say something when they’re interrupted by Imloth’s voice.

“That was quite the show,” the general says slowly, his pale eyes moving from Valen to the Savior and back. “You’re the one everyone’s been talking about.”

“Shall I prepare for another interrogation?” Palieth asks, resting her hands easily on her belt. “Or are you more amiable to the idea of a surfacer being the spearhead of your movement?”

“You can rest easy. I am General Imloth, the leader of the troops you see here.”

“Not one, but two Generals,” the ranger comments. “The Seer is very lucky indeed.”

Imloth laughs a little at the quip, but Valen only scowls. So we’re back to that, are we? She’d thought the fight would have helped loosen him up somewhat—he’d certainly expressed some of his better-concealed ire during it. The bruises she feels forming on her side are proof. What else is she supposed to do to show him she’s on his side? _Save the world_ , a small sarcastic voice says inside her, but she brushes it away.

“Your technique is impressive,” Imloth goes on. “Where did you learn?”

Palieth shrugs. “I’ve picked things up, here and there.”

He makes a sound of surprise, even if the answer she’s given isn’t really an answer at all. That doesn’t escape Valen’s notice. “If we all fought that way after picking things up the Valsharess would be very dead already.”

“You flatter me greatly,” she says quietly. “I only hope I can live up to the expectations placed upon me.”

“As do I,” Imloth agrees. “I don’t envy the task you have before you. The men doubted you, I’ll admit, but that little display just now has turned a few heads, I think. Valen is our best—no one here is a challenge to him anymore.”

The ranger nods. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope it would help.”

Imloth looks shocked for a moment before a bark of laughter escapes him. Valen fails to see what is so humorous. He doesn’t think she’s funny.

“You may just fit in around here well enough after all,” the General says, clapping the shorter elf on her back with a friendly familiarity that grates on Valen’s nerves. His hand alone dwarfs the entirety of her shoulder.

Palieth just smiles at him and her ears quirk upwards at his next question.

“Are you planning on leaving Lith My’athar soon?”

“Today, if my companions are willing,” she says, her eyes trailing to Valen. “By way of water. We’re going to need reinforcements if all I’ve heard about the Valsharess’ army of undead soldiers has any truth to it.”

“I wish you luck, then. Keep your guard up out there. The Underdark is… special.”

The Savior’s gaze is still lingering on Valen when she answers. “As I’ve come to learn. Good day, General.”

Imloth gives her a sharp nod of acknowledgement before walking off back to his men. “Well met, Savior. I’ll see you again when you return.”

 _When_. People having such faith in her would be encouraging if it weren’t so staggering. How does the Seer do it? How do any of them do it? Maybe it’s this feeling that Valen begrudges her for having. She wishes she could give it back to him. She doesn’t want it. Having someone expect something of you is a tragedy in the making. It’s like depending on the weather. How do you know when the winds are to change and your fortunes run stale? Everyone’s always told her she’s dependable, but she’s never felt it. Or perhaps she’s never thought she was good enough to be dependable.

“And where are we going?” Valen asks her, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“I didn’t think you’d want to come along,” she says truthfully and crosses her arms.

“I’m not going to let you out of my sight till either the Valsharess drops dead or I’m too incapacitated to keep up with you,” he replies with unexpected force. “And since the second doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon, I suggest you prepare yourself for a lot of me.”

And with that what meager a distance they breached while crossing blades widens again, until it’s a chasm of difference yawning between them. He seems to be getting increasingly good at making her look like that at him, as though she’s standing at the peak of some insurmountable rise and he’s at the foot of it, below her consideration.

“In that case,” she starts purposefully, arms still crossed, “prepare to make for the Isle of the Maker. We have work to do.”

Golems. Joy.

* * *

 

The boat ride is quiet, riddled with tension.

Deekin expresses some uncertainty about boarding a water-bound vessel, and then says something about oceans, but his master quiets him and takes his hand when they walk the plank to the deck of Cavallas’ ferry—they make an odd sight, a kobold with a lute strung to his back and a crossbow in one hand and a ranger on the other, grasping at him like a guiding parent. The wolf has no such needs. It pads across the plank with ease and settles itself at the base of the bridge just below the risen platform that houses the helm, curling its impressive tail around its paws.

Palieth sits by it, legs crossed, her back leaned against the wall. Valen had thought it would be necessary to warn her not to stand too close to the ship’s railings, for the fumes of the Dark River can incapacitate even the hardiest of warriors, but just like most things about her, he finds he doesn’t have to bother. She hasn’t tried talking to him since they left the training grounds, and he can’t decide if he’s welcome for the silence or feeling more uneasy for it. He’s assaulted by the sharp sting of embarrassment when she realizes he’s staring, and he redirects his attention to the distant shore that is coming ever closer in from the north.

The Isle of the Maker is a desolate, barren place, one he’s only heard of through tales of scavengers and looters.

No one else frequents the place except them and the automatons the Maker created so long ago, and he’d never given it second thought. The island is a ruin, a testament to the ravaging power of time and how easily forgotten things in the Underdark can be. The only duergar squatters that frequent the Isle are always alone in their work, and until now everyone’s been more than content to leave it to them. More often than not there’s a price to pay beyond gold to go picking through the Maker’s ruins—the golems still work, even without the direction of their creator, and they seem to have no trouble killing intruders. The Isle is a tomb more than anything else. Valen is curious to see what the ranger will make of it.

Cavallas offers no goodbyes or advice as they leave the boat in single file. Palieth unslings the longbow from her back and holds it loosely in one hand as she surveys the deserted expanse of the shore that greets them. The ground is covered in the soft purple powder she’s learned is everywhere in the Underdark, and the only thing she can hear is greedy lapping of the Dark River on the island’s rocks.

“There are others here?” she asks, voice low. “I thought we would be alone.”

Valen blinks at her. “I… don’t know. Duergar come here often, to try and eke a living out from among the wreckage.”

“That may explain why I can’t recognize them,” Palieth remarks, drawing her longbow closer. “I’ve never sensed duergar before. They’re… distinct.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, other than to be silently unsettled by the fact that she apparently doesn’t need to see people to know they’re there, and follows her with a bit of reluctance as she forges a path forward, kobold and wolf shadowing her footsteps. Are all rangers like this on the surface? It doesn’t make him like the thought of the place any better.

They ford a small incline after weaving through stalagmites taller than Valen and twice as wide, that reach for the ceiling of the cave with milky fingers.

Valen is not surprised when they come upon a duergar encampment. It’s a small, measly bivouac, mostly consisting of threadbare tents patched with mismatching fabrics and low-burning fire pits. The duergar hanging over the cauldrons and by the campfires are hungry, starved things with roving eyes that are all too glad to reach for their weapons when they catch sight of the newcomers.

Palieth strides in ahead of him, unafraid, head held high, and the others trail behind her. Valen is the one who scares a few into retreating by just glaring. He’s never had much tolerance for thieves—he knows what it is to be one and he knows you always have a choice. Scavengers are a threat to no one, but the Underdark transforms simple things. The duergar are territorial and unfriendly and they hate the drow almost as much as they hate each other. It’s a good thing the ones in this camp are so destitute. They might have been a challenge to the group otherwise.

“You there, surfacer,” the most heavily-armored of the duergar says, stopping Palieth short. The wolf gives a warning growl when the duergar makes to come closer. “We’ve staked out this island. If you want to go any further, you’ll have to state your business.”

The ranger looks at her in a way that says that if she _wanted_ to move further into the island there would be nothing the duergar leader or her subordinates could do to stop her. The dark dwarf swallows roughly, but doesn’t back down. Palieth lets the end of her longbow touch the ground. Like that, it almost looks like a walking stick.

“My name is Palieth Centholen. I mean no harm.”

 _Yet,_ Valen thinks.

“I’m Dahanna,” the duergar replies, releasing a heavy breath and relaxing visibly. “The leader of this expedition. Not many come here, especially rivvil like you. What are you looking for?”

“Allies,” Palieth says easily. She rests the crook of her elbow on the longbow and appraises Dahanna carefully. “Against the Valsharess.”

Dahanna’s face takes on a sour look. “Ah. The drow matron, eh? She’s made quite a name for herself hereabouts lately.” She snorts. “You won’t find any help here. If the drow don’t bother us, we don’t bother them.”

“She’ll be doing more than bothering you if she’s not stopped,” Palieth tells her, smiling a little. “The premise of having to pick a side is unpleasant, I’ll admit, but if you ever want to live to see another payday again, you’ll know what’s good for you.”

Dahanna’s gaze hardens with anger. “That’ll be our bridge to cross when we come to it. The duergar answer to no one, much less _elves_.”

“You seem a smart woman,” the ranger goes on, heedless. “Don’t let traditions get you killed. Or are you going to forbid me from entering the ruins as well?”

“If you think you can find something useful in this midden-heap of a pisshole, go ahead and knock yourself out,” Dahanna snaps, any semblance of shaky courtesy gone. “We’ve been here for the last twenty years, and we’re _still_ here, looking. You must have great faith in your own skills to think you can succeed where we’ve failed.”

The elf doesn’t seem to have noticed Dahanna’s rising temper. “What do you know about the Maker?”

Dahanna snorts, waving a gauntleted hand dismissively. “He may have existed once, but he’s not around any longer. All we know are legends and myths. Immutable protector, great genius, blah blah blah, invincible, infallible, yak, yak, and on and on. He supposedly made all the golems on this island.”

“I take it you’ve never found any proof of him?”

“If there’s any proof to be had, it’s in the lower levels of the ruins,” Dahanna says, scowling. “And all of our attempts to get that deep have been… rebuffed. There’s a damned repair golem. For each one we fell it resurrects two, and the cursed thing can’t be killed. Nothing we ever do is effective for long.”

Valen’s brow raises itself in interest. That’s a very kind way of saying they were slaughtered. It would explain the pathetic numbers and all the wounded huddled in the tents. Just more evidence supporting the idea that the golems are not to be trifled with, but the ranger doesn’t seem to be bothered. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by many things at all, except for him. She frowns easy enough when they’re talking.

“I see,” Palieth adds at last, and then steps back. “We’ll be going now. Thanks for the direction.”

The duergar huffs. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t try too hard to kill yourself.”

He shoots her a glare over his shoulder for that as they move out of the camp and make their way to the jagged silhouettes of the collapsed observatory towers in the distance. It takes a few minutes of searching to find a viable entrance, but when they do, it’s a good one—an old door that has seen much, much use, probably only held together by the runes undoubtedly built into its jamb. Those things are valuable, but they’re one of the things the duergar couldn’t possibly take from the island no matter how much they wished to. Only the hand of the one who put them there can remove them. A pity, Valen thinks, for the runes could fetch quite a pretty price. He just hopes they’re not part of a warding charm. That could prove difficult to disrupt.

But Palieth swings the door open without any ill effects. No lightning, no invisible walls erected to stop her. She’s about to go down into the darkness beyond when Deekin stops her.

“Um… Boss?”

Valen knows that tone. A question is coming. Probably a stupidly obvious one. He’d thought the underestimations placed on kobold intellect were exaggerated. Deekin is fighting to prove him otherwise.

Palieth turns to the kobold without a hint of impatience in her eyes. “Yes, Deekin?”

The kobold shuffles sheepishly from one clawed foot to the other. “Deekin not know much about golems… they built by wizards, right?”

“So I hear,” Palieth says, burying her fingers in the fur at the wolf’s head. Its eyes shut in happiness as she pets it.

“So… are they alive? Like Deekin? Do theys eats and sleeps and dreams and—stuffs? Do they… _wants_ things?”

Valen looks at the kobold in astonishment. And here he’d just been thinking of the Red Dragon Disciple as incapable of insight.

The ranger smiles at the small creature and shrugs. “Why not? Anything is possible.”

Deekin nods, taking in her answer. They move into the entrance, and are soon cloaked by the darkness. Thankfully, it’s not much of a problem since most of them seem perfectly able to see in it. Palieth avoids rocks and standing stones nimbly. It only confirms his suspicion about how alike the drow and their surface kin seem to be, though those similarities seem to be a point of contention between the two often. The drow boast they are different—superior, of course, and perhaps life in the Underdark has changed them some, but watching Palieth navigate ahead of him in the gloom he could almost bring himself to believe she wasn’t rivvil.

“Then, Boss, Deekin was thinkings…”

Valen just barely restrains himself from sighing. _Don’t think, you may hurt yourself._

“It just seems to Deekin that if golems _can_ think and feel and stuffs that it be really sad if they be down here since maker go away. Maybe they be stuck. Maybe they is angry.”

“A good point, my friend. Which is why I want you to be extra careful around them, alright?”

“Yes, Boss! And also, if _Deekin_ was golem and dwarves keep coming down to take golem parts, Deekin would be angry. Bored, mostly, but angry too.”

Palieth shuffles around what used to be a containing wall carefully. “I agree. That would be a terrible existence.”

The tiefling hopes that last answer will put an end to the kobold’s inquisitiveness, but it seems Deekin isn’t done just yet.

“You be turned to stone once, Boss. That not be same thing, maybe? How you feel when you be stone?”

Ahead of them the ranger pauses only for a moment, while Valen’s heart pounds in curiosity. He sees her turn to look at the kobold, briefly, but can’t name what shows on her face then.

“I didn’t feel anything when I was stone,” she says softly, and he knows it’s a lie, but Deekin doesn’t seem perturbed—or to have noticed.

“Maybe that’s what it be like to be stone!” Deekin crows, hopping over a rock, wings flapping. “Or maybe to be golem is to be shut off and on, to exists and not exists. Maybe stone golem think about the same thing?”

“Perhaps. We’re about to find out, I suppose,” Palieth murmurs and reaches the bottom of the stairs they’re descending.

He can’t keep it in. “ _Stone_?” he asks, but the ranger doesn’t look his way.

“It’s a long story,” she responds wearily, trailing a hand along the wall to her left.

They’ve entered what used to be a long entrance hallway. Now it’s a grave, a soundless mausoleum of stone and oppressive architecture. The air down here is close with humidity and decay. Some of the bodies strewn across the flagstones are relatively fresh—their eyes still open, the flesh on their cheeks and face barely begun to sag. And all duergar, as far as the eye can see. Dahanna’s flattering estimation of the scope of their failure, even restricted by dwarven pride as it was, had been astounding. How many have the scavengers lost to the winding depths of the Maker’s maze? Too many to count, apparently. And yet they keep coming back. They must be truly desperate.

His ear twitches at the sound of the ranger murmuring something. He can’t understand the words, as inviting and pleasant as they are. The language has a rolling cadence, the kind you find in poetry and song. After years upon years of listening to drow, it’s like having ice water poured straight over your head.

She notices his attention shortly after she finishes. “A prayer for the dead,” she explains quietly, turning back to look at the corpses littering the hallway.

“They knew the risks,” Valen says just as his gaze lands on a particularly young duergar, barely a boy by any standards. His helm has been cleaved open from the behind, and the scarlet mess at the back of his head doesn’t look anything like the terrified expression frozen forever on his countenance. This is not the work of the Valsharess. This is simply life in the Underdark, if life is what it can be called.

“Perhaps.”

They wander through the hallway, disarming traps in rotation as they go, Deekin and the wolf moving with them. The traps are complicated, obviously put together by someone either very clever or very paranoid—or both. Palieth is willing to wager both. Most of the wizards of the Underdark seem to fall under the category of insane genius, and the Maker doesn’t seem to have been any different. As she thinks that she feels the many-pronged pull of the geas stir in her, wakening to the passing thought of its master. Its strength is such that she has to stop for a moment and lean a little against the wall to regain her bearings.

She feels Nercane’s nose push into her knee just as Deekin speaks.

“Boss? Yous alright?”

“Yes, Deekin,” she says with more confidence than she feels. “Just tired.”

“Boss wants encouraging, rousing battlesong?”

She laughs some at that. “In a little bit. Maybe after we fight our first golem, mm?”

“Sure thing, Boss!”

The maze is impossibly large and full of hidden rooms and dissolving doorways.

Most of the things Palieth touches fall away into dust, but since no vegetation can grow in the Underdark, the convoluted designs on the walls are still very much visible and unobstructed. They are patterns without obvious sense or logic, complex tessellations that span from floor to ceilings, friezes and carvings that would make the finest sculptors in Faerûn green with envy. What doors are still standing are massive, well above Valen in height, and all made of a dark, strong metal she cannot identify. They open without a sound, swinging aside like their hinges were oiled yesterday—the work of dwarven masons truly withstands the test of time.

About three-fourths of the rooms they explore are deserted, coated with a generous leaving of filth and buildup of grime, but they are otherwise untouched. She guesses whatever little of value remained here was carried away by the duergar long ago, though at an insane cost.

The group rounds the corner to find yet another shadowed hallway stretching before them. She can’t hear or sense anything on this entire level, but she doesn’t trust the feeling. Golems, philosophical arguments aside, are not beings her abilities can pick up on. Those are reserved for things that breathe, that have pulses and life-force burning inside them, that little spark of creation that only gods can manipulate—constructs are a different matter. They have no character or aura or intent, just mechanized direction. She’s effectively flying blind.

“Boss, looks here. Pretty carvings!”

She’s about to say, yes, Deekin, very pretty, when she realizes what he’s pointing at. The top of the figure is shrouded in gloom, but she can see a thick granite arm, one that ends in five bulbous fingers, and her blood runs cold at the sight of them twitching. It’s waking up.

“Watch out!” she cries, throwing caution to the wind and lunging forward to yank Deekin by the collar of his tunic.

They go rolling across the floor just as the golem’s arm swoops across the air above them. She hears Valen tear Devil’s Bane from his back and covers her head as he leaps over them to intercept the golem. The minute she sees the shadow clear she pushes Deekin to his feet, shouting “Go!” as she leaps to her own and nocks an arrow to her bow. The enchantments along the wood come to life at her pulling the string back, and she murmurs a short wish for it to strike true when she lets go.

The magic gathered at the tip of the arrow sends a shock of bright light through the corridor, and brings the golem’s head into sharp relief. It’s a hulking tower of stout stone, with something that looks like a helm sitting on its shoulders. It has eyes, or what can pass as eyes, two reeling points of glowing scarlet that move at different paces and roll in different directions. If the Maker ever built this thing in an attempt to emulate something alive, he failed momentously. All it seems to her is mindless—and evil.

A vicious swing of Devil’s Bane only barely makes a dint in the golem’s leg, and Valen has to duck under the grabbing reach of its searching hand. It makes a sound like grinding rock when it opens its mouth. Upon seeing the miserable effect Devil’s Bane has on the moving giant, she projects a warning to Nercane through their link, sending him images of protection and avoidance.

_Take Deekin aside. Don’t come nearer. You’ll just break your teeth on this thing’s skin._

She sees the wolf grasp at the corner of Deekin’s tunic with a careful mouth and only turns her attention away from them when she’s satisfied they’re at a safe enough distance. Palieth slings the longbow over her shoulder and unsheathes Enserric, holding the sword at her side. The blade turns red at her touch.

“Is it killing time?” he asks over the din of Valen going at the golem with Devil’s Bane. “I do so love killing time!”

Palieth lunges at the golem with a cry and brings the longsword down on its knee. The edge bites deep into the rock but she has to put all her body weight behind moving back to pull it free.

“Ow! Gods’ teeth, woman, are you trying to shatter me?” Enserric yowls in protest, but she ignores him.

She runs between the golem’s pillar-like legs, trying urgently to find some sort of weakness to exploit. Dodging is all well and good, but they can’t allow themselves to be stalled too long by just one golem—there are many more in these ruins, perhaps _hundreds_. If they can’t defeat just one, what are they even doing here in the first place? Enserric is still shouting something or other about broken swords and how the faithful are always rewarded with vile treatment when Valen grabs her by the hood of her cloak and bodily _wrests_ her from the ground with one hand and lifts her out of the path of the golem’s backward kick.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he snarls in her face once her feet are touching the ground again, but she’s too preoccupied with her discovery to be offended at his closeness or the stupidly unprofessional mistake she made in not noticing the golem moving.

“Forget that,” she says, waving a hand in his face and then pointing at the radiant, raised circle on the back of the golem’s neck. “Look.”

“What is that?” Valen asks, momentarily distracted.

“It must be what’s powering it. There’s no other explanation,” Palieth answers, jiggling the longsword in her hand the way she always shuffles things when she’s thinking too hard.

“You’re going to make me sick!” Enserric snaps but he is again ignored in favor of more important conversation.

“Distract it,” Palieth tells Valen, sheathing the sword. “I’m going to pull that thing out.”

Valen looks at her unsurely, blue eyes wary. “And what if pulling it out just makes it angry?”

She grins at him genuinely for just a heartbeat, so carefree that it makes her look twenty years younger and brings the dimples in her cheeks out of hiding. It takes his breath away.

“Then this’ll have gotten that much more exciting. Cover me!”

Her cloak billows like a flag at half-mast as she bounds over to the golem. It turns to her slowly before it seems to remember Valen is at its feet, and in a show of subpar intelligence, decides that Valen is the priority. He has no trouble fending off its punches for the first few minutes, but after the tenth blow he feels the bones in his jaw rattle and something in his shoulder pulls unpleasantly at the strain. Valen has to let go of the flail to grapple with the golem bare-handed when it adds a second fist to the pounding, and soon the back of his heels are screaming against the floor as he fights to gain ground over the golem’s might.

 _Hurry_ , he wills her quietly, and the cobbles under his feet crack and break with the force of the golem’s strikes. Had Valen been fully human, he’d have been snapped in half already. He supposes he has at least one thing to be grateful to his infernal blood for.

The fingers of his gauntlets have gouged deep paths on the golem’s knuckles and are ready to slip off when the golem gives a thundering, creaking groan, a sound like the beginning of an avalanche. It whips back, gigantic hands flapping uselessly, and at that instant Valen sees the figure clinging agilely to its back. Palieth has one hand hooked into the golem’s shoulder to anchor herself there and the other is holding the hunting knife she’d used earlier to spar with him over her head. She drives it down, wedging the blade between the golem’s skin and the orb at its nape, and twists it back and forth until the tip pops the orb out of place. It goes clattering away to the floor, rolling into the shadows.

The golem gives a howl as the unnatural light of its eyes goes out, and rakes its hands over its back in a troubling display of very human-looking fear. Palieth is already halfway down the back again when one of the stone fingers catches in her cloak, and the sound that’s forced from her as the golem closes its fist around her is horrifying enough to make the kobold cry out.

“Boss!”

Even now the golem is slowing, its energy sapped, but the last thing it does is fling what it’s caught against the adjacent wall with shattering strength. The elf slides down till she hits the floor and lies there in a crumple of limbs and fabric.

“ _Boss!_ ”

The kobold runs past him as the golem falls apart into dusty bits and pieces as though the menacing battle-titan it had been moments before never existed. Valen fastens Devil’s Bane in its place before moving over to where the kobold and wolf have crowded around their master. The latter growls and snaps at his fingers when he gets too close, but Deekin tugs on its fur to pull it aside. Palieth stirs weakly, coughing and trying to sit up but stopping with a hiss of pain when it gets too much for her.

“Boss,” the kobold blubbers, as his vocabulary has apparently been reduced to that one word. “Please let not Boss be dead! Deekin loves the Boss.”

“I’m alive,” she rasps. “My head exists in ten different planes now, but I’m alive.”

Valen kneels, reaches out and halts when he remembers the wolf is watching. “You’re bleeding,” he says.

“I imagine I am,” Palieth whispers, touching the back of a knuckle to the space between her lips and nose. “And quite a bit.”

“Can you walk?” Valen asks, not really knowing why he even feels compelled to.

“What would you like to hear?” she croaks. Her legs move feebly. “I think… my ribs…”

“We heard,” he says, and then moves forward, only stopping when she makes a garbled noise of protest.

She looks at him warily through the strands of hair that have fallen over her eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Carrying you,” Valen informs her curtly. “Or trying to.”

“Ah. Ugh…”

She weighs more than she looks she would, but it’s still not enough to give him pause. She’s uncomfortable in his arms, that much is sure—not that he’s any better. He can’t find out where to put his blasted hands. There aren’t many proper places to _hold_ when you’re carrying someone like a bride over a threshold. He tries not to think about the fact that she feels very nicely proportioned even under the canvas of her cloak, or that she’s as warm as a glowstone. Admiration is one thing, but the disgust he feels at the possibility of her betrayal kills it all. He just has to keep thinking about that.

He kicks open the door to a small side-room and sets Palieth down on the bedroll Deekin hastily lays out. She stays there, eyes screwed shut in agony, as Valen barricades the entrance. When that’s done he turns around again, purposeless, feeling awkward in not having a space to belong. Deekin is sitting by his master’s head, brushing the hair away from her face, and the wolf is curled up by her side, its yellow eyes remarkably sad. Valen shuffles his way over to the pack and digs out three healing potions, though she may not need as many, seeing as she’s two sizes smaller than him.

Palieth cracks open her eyes when he sits by her, crossing his legs—or as much as he can cross them still in full armor.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” she says, wincing when she rests an arm across her chest.

“The golem’s dead, at least,” Valen reminds her and regrets it when it makes her laugh. “That was a foolish thing to do.”

She hums. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did, but you won’t saving anyone if you’re dead,” he says, uncorking a healing potion and handing it over to her. She has too much difficulty lifting her head, and he’s about to offer to prop her up to help her drink it when Deekin snatches the bottle from his hands and does it instead. The lapse in action makes him glad he never had the chance to ask.

What in the hells is he thinking? She’s not a friend. Only a comrade. And a grudging one, at that. He turns his gaze to the doorway, angry with himself.

“Boss feeling better now?” Deekin asks in a hopeful squeak, his large eyes brimming with unshed tears.

“Aye, Deekin, much,” she assures him. “We’ll have to rest here a while but I should be fighting fit in a few hours.”

“Deekin is glad. Deekin was so worried, Boss. So worried.”

“I’m sorry for that too, then, little friend. I just wanted to end it quickly,” she says, patting one of Deekin’s long cheeks with her palm.

Valen doesn’t know how long they sit in that room. In the darkness of the maze there’s no telling if it’s night or day, and thankfully the place is built with meticulous attention to ventilation, so the air, though humid, is bone-chillingly cold. Deekin strikes up a small fire between two rocks he displaces to make a makeshift pit and covers Palieth with a blanket he fishes from her rucksack. When the kobold finally settles it’s with paper and quill and a small wooden board balanced on his knees. He scratches away without paying much attention to anything else, and the room is mercifully quiet except for Deekin’s incessant humming.

The Savior is asleep, breathing evenly, her long lashes casting shadows on the high arch of her cheeks. A smear of dried blood remains on her jaw and there’s a cut on her bottom lip that looks painful, but her slumber is undisturbed. He’s heard that elves’ sleep is unlike any other, more of a trance than a restful reprieve from the world, and if they do not wish to be woken not even all the armies of every hell in the planes could make them do so before they are ready.

It’s another hour before he decides he can’t stand it.

“Kobold,” he says sharply, and Deekin looks up at him from the wooden board. “I have a question for you.”

Deekin stares at him in surprise. “You gots question for Deekin?”

“Yes, but it is one question, and one question _only_ ,” he replies, gritting his teeth so hard he’s sure every golem within five miles can hear the grind of bone on bone. “If you attempt to sidetrack me into some tangent with your inanity, I shall be forced to behead you.”

Deekin doesn’t look as scared as he should by that threat. Perhaps he’s used to it—being threatened. It wouldn’t shock Valen at all.

“You takes Deekin’s head off, Deekin not gets to answer your question,” the kobold says, shrugging, and goes back to carving out sentences on his parchment.

“Yes, well… that is a risk I shall have to take,” Valen admits with a frown. “My question is this: this _song_ you constantly sing, where did you learn it?”

Deekin blinks at him. “You means the Doom Song?” he asks, and then hums a few phrases experimentally.

“That’s the one,” Valen confirms, hoping it’ll stop the humming. “It keeps running through my head. I swear, it’ll drive me mad. _Where did you learn it_? Is it a bardic trick meant to lure the enemy into a crazed frenzy?”

The expression on the kobold’s face says it’s nothing so complicated as that. He should have known. “Deekin makes it up one day when he be in desert. Deekin and Boss be doomed, he thinking.”

Just how long have the kobold and the elf traveled together?

Valen looks at him for a long moment. “...And that’s it?”

Deekin perks up. “You gots more than one question?”

“No,” Valen says quickly. “No, I don’t. Forget I said anything at all.”

He returns to the most riveting task of staring at the campfire after that, attempting without success to get the circling tune of the Doom Song out of his mind. When that doesn’t work he resigns himself to shrugging off the gauntlets and pinching at the bridge of his nose with his fingers, hoping it’ll alleviate the thudding ache pounding between his eyes. Headaches have ever been his enemy, always present when he needs them least. He’s so engrossed in the discomfort that he doesn’t know Deekin has dropped anything in his lap until the kobold speaks.

“Theres,” Deekin says as he crouches back into his spot by the fire. “Goatman reads that, and you’ll sees. All answer to every question you can has in there.”

It’s a book, Valen realizes as he looks down at the object, leather-bound, with bold embossed writing in the front that reads _Shadows of Undrentide._

“What is it?” Valen says before he can stop himself.

“Adventures,” Deekin says, grinning toothily. “Hows Boss and Deekin meets, hows Deekin leaves old master—all of what happened in big desert and with scary mummy men and flying city. You reads, it good. Deekin knows. Deekin writes it.”

And sure enough, beneath the title in swirling script is the name _Deekin Scalesinger._

“I’ll… look at it sometime,” Valen says, noting with some dread that the novel is particularly fat and probably just as wordy. Does the kobold carry copies of this around? And if so, how many? How has its back not broken from the weight yet?

“Good,” Deekin affirms happily and then returns to his scrawling in earnest. The quiet settles over the room once more. The Savior continues to sleep, and her wolf sits at her side, ever vigilant, ever prepared to defend her, his massive head pillowed on her knee. Soon Nercane too has slipped into a fitful doze, and the only ones remaining awake are Deekin and his tiefling company, but the former has no eyes for anything but his parchment.  

That’s why nobody notices when Valen, if reluctantly, cracks the book open.


End file.
